


heaven help a fool who falls in love

by singsongsung



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 01:19:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10888836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: Betty is a force to be reckoned with, and Jughead’s always been fond of a good reckoning.





	heaven help a fool who falls in love

**Author's Note:**

> This follows Jughead and Betty through the season, so there are spoilers through 1x13. 
> 
> Title from The Lumineers' "Ophelia."

_do you like walking in the rain?  
when you think of love, do you think of pain?_  
\- vance joy, "mess is mine" 

 

 

Betty, on the periphery of his childhood, Archie’s-other-best-friend-Betty, has always reminded him of vanilla ice cream on a sticky summer day. 

Pure and fresh. Delicate, fragile -- prone to melting. Sweet as can be with just a hint of tartness. Pleasantly cool. Like a 1950s housewife with an apron tied around her waist, calling you back to a time when everything was safe and simple. 

He remembers her as a child with her hair in pigtails, always wearing something pink or white and frilly. He remembers the mud she’d gotten on her dress one afternoon by the river, and how she’d cried because her mother would yell. He remembers Archie’s chubby, little boy arm snaking its way around her shoulders. 

“Such a pretty little thing,” his mother used to sigh, and even as a child he’d understood that sigh, the way it acknowledged that pretty little pink girls in ribbons and bows did not belong to the life they were leading. 

Betty, on the periphery of his childhood, his terrible preteen years, his brooding adolescence, had always seemed untouchable. 

Until, one day, he touched her. 

 

 

“You kissed me,” Betty says, hair wet with rain, eyes red with grief. 

“Yeah,” Jughead replies, with just a touch of hesitancy. It sounds quiet and strange, almost like an apology. He sighs. “Look, Betty - ”

In the streetlights her eyes dance, flickering blue, green, and then blue again. There is something about her mouth that makes his chest ache. 

“I kissed you back,” she says, and those words - they don’t sound like an apology at all. 

 

 

“I’m going to marry Betty,” Archie told him one day, all of ten or eleven years old, red hair sticking up haphazardly on his head. 

“You’re going to marry her,” Jughead had repeated, maybe a little cynical, not all that surprised. 

“Yeah.” Archie was so careless about it, so at ease. “You know, when we’re older.” 

Archie, son of a father whose words were always warm and kind, son of a mother who gave out hugs freely, was so very assured of it. He would marry Betty one day, sweet little girl-next-door Betty, and that was all there was to the world, that was how simple it would be. 

Jughead had said nothing in return, had let the conversation drift to a new topic, had only thought: _that’s not for me_. 

 

 

He doesn’t know if it will ever be for him. Certainly there are some things he feels, at his core, incapable of, nauseated by: football uniforms to match cheerleading ones, prom-posals, hooking up in the bedroom of the unfortunate parents who’ve left town for the weekend and whose children are wreaking havoc in the form of a high school party. 

And there are other things that give him pause -- surprise birthday parties, the awkward sound of the word _girlfriend_ , the expectation that holding Betty’s hand in the hallway will make him into someone utterly normal, somehow. 

All the same, he finds himself doing things, without thought, without hesitation, that he’d never been sure of before. He kisses Betty in the hallway of Riverdale High, her back against his locker, her bright pink sweater a contrast against his dark jacket. It isn’t a kiss that lingers but it’s a kiss that makes him feel, acutely, the charged energy in the space between their bodies, the way the denim over his thigh brushes, ever so briefly, against the denim over hers. 

He goes to Homecoming. He goes to the damn Jubilee. He shows up, over and over, in the places where Betty Cooper is, because that’s where he wants to be. 

She is a force to be reckoned with, that girl, and Jughead’s always been fond of a good reckoning. 

 

 

Betty touches his face, palm warm against his cheek, fingertips gliding over temple, over jawline. He’s never particularly liked being touched but it’s her impulse, when she wants to comfort him, reassure him, get through to him. Her hands are so soft and he can’t not like it, the simple tenderness in that gesture. Her hand against his cheek and the warmth in her eyes tell him things that she’s never said out loud. 

It is with Betty’s hand on his face that he thinks, for the first time, _I love you._ It’s an abrupt thought, so startling that it feels intrusive. He so rarely thinks those words, so very rarely says them. 

But Betty’s got that look in her eyes, and when she sees a hint of his smile she wrinkles her nose in that sweet way of hers, wisps of hair escaping, slowly and gently, from her ponytail. 

Jughead thinks, _Fuck. I love you._

 

 

Next to him in a diner booth, smelling the way she always smells, like the crisp faux-fresh scent of dryer sheets, like coconut-scented shampoo, Betty uncurls her fists and shows him her secrets. 

There is a storm in her eyes and one corner of her mouth pulls downward. He folds her fingers back inward for her, as if to keep her scars safe, and kisses her fingertips. 

Betty leans in to kiss him, presses her head against his shoulder and releases a trembling sigh. He drags his hand gently over her shoulder, moving it upward and downward unhurriedly. He turns his face into her hair, pressing his nose against her scalp. 

“There isn’t anything wrong with you,” he says softly. 

She snorts, undignified and skeptical, her body pressed so tightly to his side he can feel the warmth radiating from her skin. 

Jughead amends: “Whatever’s wrong with you, Betty… it works for me.”

He can feel, rather than see, the creases of confusion in her forehead. “It works for you?” When he nods against her head, she says, “Like, it turns you on?” 

Jughead glances down at her face, surprised, and sees her peeking up at him through her lashes, the path of a single tear mapped down one side of her face, a hint of a cheeky smile on her lips. 

“Why, Betty Cooper,” he teases. “I do declare. You’re going to make me blush.” 

Her smile grows, turning fond. He leans in even closer. 

Against the shell of her ear, he whispers, “Whatever’s wrong, it’s right for me.” 

She shivers. 

 

 

While the world around them rages in frightening ways, everything with Betty has been quiet and soft. She is almost gentle with him, hands so tender against his cheeks, kisses that taste like her lip balm and hesitancy. 

Jughead doesn’t push. He knows he’s probably in the company of most of their peers in his assumption that Betty’s a virgin, but he feels like he has more right to assume so. He’s been at the outskirts of Betty’s life for so many years, and his only knowledge of her romantic exploits is that she kissed Archie once when they were twelve (a mutually beneficial arrangement designed to get them both over the nerve-wracking hump of one’s very first kiss), and that she once drank a little too much at a football party, played spin the bottle, and passed out on a couch before eleven. And that Veronica kissed her at the beginning of the year, since the whole school heard about that. 

There is something about Betty that both begs defilement and forbids it. Her sister, Polly, was similar before she began sleeping with Jason Blossom, but there was always, for most of the guys at Riverdale High, something a little more welcoming about the idea of hooking up with Polly Cooper than of trying to get into her little sister’s pants. 

There was something more dangerous about Betty, there always had been. If you broke her, you’d have to buy her - and there was no doubt she’d break into pieces so sharp you’d never want to touch them. 

He likes those edges of Betty, but he lets her take the lead, keeps their kisses soft and relatively chaste. He wants her to hand him her pieces, so he can try and fit them against his own. 

 

 

Betty doesn’t know when to quit. She’s stubborn as hell and it drives him up the wall, but it’s admirable, her stubbornness, her certainty. 

It’s also hot. 

When Betty is being Betty, pushing when she shouldn’t, refusing to let go, he walks away, because walking away is the hallmark of Jughead’s life, a behavior he’s learned from both his parents. When the going gets tough, Jughead gets going. 

Despite this, when he’s storming off, he also wants to be doing the opposite, moving toward her, getting in her space, grabbing her hips, kissing her hard, pushing his hands under her pastel shirts. He imagines this happening on a day when she’s wearing one of those neat, short skirts of hers, and he could so easily slip his hands beneath it. 

He has dreams sometimes of these scenarios. Betty always gasps and demures and then submits to him, head tilted back, hips pressing forward, arms entwined around his neck. 

He has these dreams and then he wakes up and stifles a groan, torn from visions of Betty Cooper unbuttoning her jeans to the harsh reality of Archie Andrews snoring to his left. 

 

 

She cries when he can’t. When he feels emptied out and broken, Betty has tears in her eyes, on her face, a lump in her throat that he can hear in her voice. Betty cries over his homelessness, over his stubbornness, over every terrible thing that happens with his father. He sneaks out of the Andrews house after Archie is asleep, taps on her window and crawls into her bed. Betty’s tears run over her nose, toward her pillow, and he says, “Don’t cry,” and she murmurs his name, soft and sad. Her kisses are salty and when they’re half asleep she’ll be the big spoon, trying to wind her body around his, leg around his hips, arm across his torso. 

Often he’ll nudge her gently after a few minutes and they’ll shift, rolling over, so that he can curl around her instead. Her hair gets in his face, tickling his nose, and he’ll slip his hand just under the baseball tee she likes to sleep in, or tuck his thumb _just_ into the waist of her pyjama pants, brushing against the lace that borders the top of her panties. Sometimes he slides his hand upward over her shirt and she’ll let out a pleased, sleepy sound from the back of her throat as he cups her breast. 

But sometimes (rarely, but sometimes), he’s too tired and worn down and he lets her stay wrapped around him, lets her hold him close to her and breathe against his ear, lets Betty hold him until he wakes up around four, tucks the blankets close around her, and heads next door again. 

 

 

When the Serpents leave, he closes the door slowly. Betty stands in his living room with uncertainty all over her face. She’s put her coat back on, having expected her mother on the other side of the door, and they are a study in contrasts, her pale pink coat belted at the waist and his black leather jacket hanging around his shoulders. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her, and takes the jacket off, tossing it on the couch. He holds out his arms to her. 

Betty steps into his hold, fingers slipping into the belt loops of his jeans as she studies his face. “They want you to be a Serpent?”

“They want me to know they’ll…protect me.”

“But…” She looks at the jacket. “You’re not going to…”

He remembers the words written in blood on her locker. “No, no, I just - I don’t have… I don’t have a lot of people in my corner, Betts.”

Her eyes flash. “Yes, you do. You’ve got Archie and Mr. Andrews and Veronica and Kevin and - You have _me_ , Jug.” 

The fire in her eyes makes him smile; Betty Cooper, force to be reckoned with. “My impossible girl,” he murmurs, and pulls her closer, wanting to finish what they started. 

She puts her hands on his chest. “I’m serious. I don’t think getting involved with them is a good idea. I think it’s a bad idea, actually.” 

Jughead sighs. “I’m a big kid, Betty. I can take care of myself.” 

“I know you can, but Juggie, you don’t have to.” 

He nods. “Let’s try not to worry, just for tonight. Okay?” 

Betty half-smiles. “Jughead Jones, have you even met me?” 

 

 

He gives her a tour of his childhood bedroom, watching her touch his old drawings sticky-tacked to the wall, flipping through his old CDs and listening to her giggle at his preteen tastes. They lay down on his bed, facing each other, hands tucked under their cheeks. 

“I like you without your hat,” Betty whispers, playing with his hair, and he draws her close to him for a kiss. 

Their clothes come off again, shirts first. This is a better angle than before - Jughead can settle his body over hers and kiss her neck, her breasts. Betty shifts her legs apart so he can fit between them. 

He takes off her skirt very gently, helping her with the zipper and sliding it down her legs. Betty’s underwear matches - he doesn’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that it always does - in shades of pale pink and black. 

“You’re beautiful, you know,” he tells her, and she blushes. 

He takes off his pants and they kiss and kiss, Betty sinking further into his old mattress, their bodies pressed tight together. She explores his body with hands that are hesitant at first and then emboldened. Jughead slips fingers inside her panties, touches her gently, and she sucks in a breath, hands on his shoulders. 

It doesn’t go much further than that. Betty trembles and he can see all her worries dancing through her eyes. They can’t get back to the place they were before the knock on the door, that post-I-love-you bliss, Betty’s laughter high and happy, her hands pulling him closer, closer, closer. 

“Let’s go to sleep,” he tells her, planting kisses across her collarbone. She opens her mouth, and he just knows she’s going to apologize, so he kisses her before she can even start and tells her to text Veronica, “Tell your mother you’re sleeping over there.” 

Jughead gives Betty a t-shirt to sleep in and watches with mild amusement as she puts it on before modestly slipping her bra off underneath and tugging it out of one of the sleeves. 

They’re a tight fit in his old twin bed, but he definitely doesn’t mind, not with the smooth skin of Betty’s thighs under his hands, her whispered _love you_ in the hollow of his throat. 

 

 

The call comes in shortly before ten the next morning, when they’re both still sleeping soundly. 

Betty bursts into tears and he clutches her to him for a moment, hand firm against the back of her neck, before they scramble back into their clothes. 

Snow falls as they wait for a cab and Betty’s lips tremble with the effort of holding in sobs. “Everything keeps falling apart,” she whispers. 

Jughead holds her hands to keep them from balling into fists. He thinks: _the centre cannot hold._

 

 

There is a reoccurring dream universe somewhere inside his head. Visions of all of his friends and their families in 1950s attire, laughing, _beaming_ , like they’re in a sitcom. Betty wears her hair in curls and a full skirt and on her left hand there are rings that match the band Jughead is sporting on his own hand. 

It’s a weird dream - freaky, even - but he always wakes up smiling. 

 

 

At the hospital, Betty rushes to Archie, throwing her arms around him tightly and murmuring things, quickly and quietly, undoubtedly about how everything will be okay. Archie’s hands lay flat against her back and he bends his head into her shoulder and cries. 

Jughead watches them helplessly, feeling that old tug of uncertainty that the perfect picture of Archie-and-Betty tends to give him. He meets Veronica’s eyes. She’s not wearing any makeup and she struggles to try and smile at him. 

“Oh, Arch,” Betty says softly, pulling back. There are tears on her cheeks, too. 

Archie scrubs his hands over his face. “The doctor should come back soon, I think. To tell us…” 

Betty nods. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. You should eat something. Drink something. We’ll go get you breakfast.” She ushers Archie and Veronica into seats and promises to be right back.

She turns to Jughead and takes his hand, leading the way to the cafeteria. “It’ll be okay, Juggie,” she says without looking at him, the laser-focus of her gaze reading hospital signs. 

He squeezes her hand. In the cafeteria she lets go to fill cups with coffee and pick out muffins. 

When he looks at his palm, he sees four neat streaks of Betty’s blood. 

 

 

Fred Andrews’ prognosis remains uncertain after his surgery. Archie goes off to see his dad; Veronica goes off to “powder her nose.” Betty and Jughead sit side by side in yesterday’s clothes, dark circles under their eyes. 

He reaches for her hand and uncurls her fingers one at a time. “Betty,” he murmurs, looking at the four indentations, crusted over with blood. 

“It doesn’t feel safe,” she whispers, her eyes watering. He knows she’s thinking of the Serpents jacket in his trailer. “Juggie, please - ”

Jughead tucks her tangled hair behind her ear. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promises her, and he means it with everything in him. 

Betty breathes out something between a scoff and a sigh. “And what do you think will happen to me if something happens to _you_?” 

He looks at the broken skin in her palm. It was only hours ago that Betty was sitting on the shallow kitchen countertop in the trailer, pulling his shirt off, only hours ago that she’d been touching him like she wanted him to take her, to break her apart and love every piece of her. It was only hours ago that he’d taken off his beanie and told her he loved her. Only hours ago that she’d said it back with the shine of happiness in her eyes. 

He aims for inappropriate levity, combing fingers through her hair: “Here will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars.” 

Betty shakes her head, tears in her eyes. “Jug - ”

He takes her face in both his hands. “I love you. I _love_ you.” 

“That’s never been enough to save anyone, Juggie,” she whispers. “You can ask the Bard himself.” 

“I don’t need the Bard. I’ve got Nancy Drew.” He wipes away a tear that slips down her cheek. “And she’s fucking fantastic.” He looks right into her eyes. “Stick with me, Betts. Stick with me and when we graduate, we can get out of here.” 

She licks her lips and he can see the protest leaving her body, the tension of it slowly seeping out of her shoulders. It might not be enough; it might be too much. They’ve all been to hell and back three or four times over and maybe they’ll make the trek again. 

Jughead presses his forehead against hers. “I’ll hold your hand. Whatever happens, I’ll hold your hand. And we’ll deal with it.” 

Betty looks down, in between them, at her open palm with its angry red marks. He sees the doubt flicker over her face, like she’s not quite sure it’s a hand worth being held. “I’m in love with you,” she whispers, like it’s something terrible, like it’s a tragedy, and he understands that, understands that for Betty Cooper, giving herself up to someone else for safekeeping isn’t easy - it’s the same for him. 

“Yeah,” he says, and he folds her fingers in again, keeping her scars safe. In a few minutes, he’ll go in search of ointment for her, and in a few days, or maybe weeks, he’ll try to talk to her about this, this thing she does to herself, and ask if he can help.

But for now he holds her hand in both of his, his touch firm with surety but also oh-so-careful, as if he’s holding her heart. 

 

 

fin.


End file.
